Saturday, February 12, 2011

Why Just Publishing YouTube Videos Is No Longer Enough

Video marketing is one aspect of social media that can deliver some great SEO results, boosting your Google page rank and website traffic. But to get the maximum mileage from it you need to leverage your video content.

So you’ve set up your Youtube channel and posted some interesting videos. Your videos are #1 on Youtube and Google videos for your chosen keywords but so far your overall website ranking hasn’t changed. What do you do next?

The search engines give a lot of weight to interactions with social media content and just publishing is no longer good enough if you want to boost your website ranking. So the very first thing you need to do if you want to have real SEO impact is get as many people as possible to view your videos, rate them, like them and leave comments. If you can get them to subscribe to your channel all the better. The more subscribers you have the more highly Google will rate your content so if you want viewers to subscribe to your channel include a call to action in the video itself.

The second thing you must do is get lots of external links to your videos. If you can get links from authoritative sites (e.g. bloggers with high website traffic) this will be particularly beneficial so do tell them about your content. If they think it’s something that’s going to be of interest to their readers they may well want to link to it or if it’s especially good even write a post about it.

Make sure you post links to your videos on your website, your Google Maps listing, your Facebook page and on Twitter. Encourage your followers to like your links and share them with their Facebook friends and retweet.

Following other channels on Youtube and sharing and rebroadcasting their content is also worthwhile as this will increase your visibility within the Youtube community and encourage other channel owners to do the same for you. Commenting knowledgeably on other videos will bring you attention and establish you as an authority on your subject and initiating discussions will boost your viewing figures as more people join in.

One of the primary purposes of video marketing is search engine optimisation so make sure you have optimised your videos by including your keywords in the title, description and tags. If you don’t do this the search engines won’t be able to find and index your content. It’s particularly important to include your website URL and your primary keyword at the beginning of the description.

Finally, Google loves fresh content so upload new videos on a regular basis and keep a close eye on who else is posting content that relates to your keywords. If the competition increases, you may need to up your game by publishing more frequently.

If you follow these simple tips over time you should see an improvement in your website ranking.

Author Resource Box

Jan Willis is founder Director of WOW Consulting, an Essex based online marketing and web design company specialising in web promotion for small businesses. Under a separate trading name, Easy Video Marketing, WOW provides cost effective web video solutions and advice to small businesses on how to use video marketing to increase their visibility on the web.

We produce stunning, affordable promotional videos for small businesses. Check us out - you'll be amazed at the quality of our work and our low prices!